And I had dragged my loving wife, Nell, back to Beggar’s Hole, through the portal in the snowy banks of Everwinter, all to rescue her from the fate she might suffer. But she had promised me that she would hate me in return. Hate me forever.
Dark waves rolled in. It reminded me of the ocean along Beggar’s Hole, although this sea was warm and only given contour by the ribbons of white foam at the head of the waves.
Somehow, stupidly, I felt as if Nell and I were still connected by the black waters, even if it wasn’t possible. We were under two entirely different sets of stars.
What a disturbing realization.
“Theon!” A male voice broke through my thoughts, drawing me from the crashing ocean. Charis, a fellow fire dragon and my senior, approached at a lope across the sand. “The hunt was most successful. It looks like we’ll be fed another fortnight.”
Charis in his dragon form, although blind in one eye, continued to hunt with the pack, and the ogre they had secured was being quartered and skinned in the distance. I grimaced, even though I was relieved to know that our resources weren’t entirely depleted following the destruction of our shelter. I just couldn’t be happy. Nothing could make me happy anymore. For all intents and purposes, my grimace had become my smile.
“I wish you’d come with us,” Charis said, seeming to sense my melancholy. Who couldn’t? “Perhaps that would have… helped.”
“Perhaps.” I knew the truth, though it didn’t help anyone to say it aloud. They all knew. The only thing that would help would be to reclaim The Hearthlands as my own. Only then, with my rightful kingdom beneath my feet and my bride at my side, swollen with young—the heirs to the Aena dynasty—would I ever be happy again.
Nell
Parnassia moved closer to me, regarding my body with shrewd eyes. Behind her, the young continued to languish. “If my sisters knew, they would certainly steal the child. Or kill me for my weakness.”
“They’ll never know,” I rushed to say, even though I had no way of knowing that. “You can say that you stole it. You can say that you had it yourself.”
Parnassia considered. “My sisters will not like that I struck a deal with Theon’s mate. The same Theon who broke Astrid’s wing.”
“They’ll never know!” I cried again, beginning to lose my patience. How long did we have until another harpy approached this nest? “Take me. Forget your sisters. You have lived your entire life without a child. Constructing nests for eggs that would never hatch, nests for eggs that were filled with… accidents. Mistakes. Don’t you deserve something of your very own?”
Parnassia’s eyes gleamed. I had found her Achilles’ heel: selfishness. Perhaps that was the reason that a harpy would want a child: a thing she could mold and control and never give away. It had nothing to do with love.
“Let us go, mortal,” she cawed, flapping her wings and lifting into the air. “Before any of my sisters see.”
I raised my arms into the air to take her talons and hold them like hands, but she didn’t quite grasp the concept—or maybe she just ignored it. Her leathery digits seized my shoulders and lifted into the air with a powerful flap of her massive wingspan, carrying me through the dark and frigid sky, toward the rock island just a few miles offshore.
When she lowered me onto the black ring of rock, waves exploding along its outside, the harpy seemed eager to depart, like a companion at the close of a business meeting. She lowered me to the rocks, and asked no more questions, as if she needed no more answers. Did she not need to know where she could find me later? Did she not need to even know my name?
But the mottled brown harpy lifted into the air. Her portion of our deal was complete. I could only pray that my fruitless promise to the creature—some sort of deity? A demon, she had called herself—would never return to haunt me.
“Don’t forget,” Parnassia commanded me, tone clipped and cold. The severity of her eye contact and her willful mouth—filled with those spiny canines—were enough to assure me that Parnassia would never forget. “I will be watching you… Penelope O’Hara.”
I was speechless and filled with dread as the huge harpy glared at me.
I shuddered and shook the transaction from my head, turning my back on her. That couldn’t be my primary concern right now. First, I had to get back to The Hearthlands, to Everwinter. And then, then I could explain to Theon what I’d done.
I peered down at the fluctuating, smoky substance which stretched from one metallic bolt to the next. It looked at first glance like a flat, cosmic jelly, some artist’s dreamy creation in the middle of nowhere… but I knew better.